"The Old People"

 My mother started displaying this old album at her home on the fireplace mantel after I was married.  I was curious about the people inside but she didn't know who any of the people were.  She knew it had belonged to her grandmother Olive Iola (Dixon) Carver but that was all she knew about it.  (Olive is Elaine (Carver) Elsner's mother.)
Every time I would visit my mom, I would look to see whose picture the album was opened to and sometimes I would turn the page so that we could look at a new person for awhile.  I called them "the old people".  Then one day I noticed that "the old people" were not on display anymore!  She had put the album away.  I felt sorry for "the old people".  I felt like they should be seen even if we didn't know who they were.
When she decided to sell her house and move to California I asked her what she was going to do with "the old people" and she said that I could have the album.  Boy was I happy!  I really loved looking at these photos and wondering about who the people were.  The album was very fragile so I had to be very careful with it.  I put it on my mantel for awhile, but it really needed to be put in a safe place to keep it from falling apart any more than it had.  So I bought a special box to keep it in.
I had done a little genealogy, but it wasn't until a few years later that I really got into it.  I was laid off from my job, I had lots of time on my hands, and I was hooked on genealogy staying up till all hours of the night searching for ancestors.  That is when I decided that I would find out who these "old people" were.
I was able to find out who they were and where they belonged on the family tree.  But, I never scanned the photos because the book was too delicate.  I couldn't remove the photos without causing damage and I didn't want to subject the album to a scanner by smashing it flat onto the glass and having to flip and hold the album one way and then the other to scan the pictures.  But I have a Flip-Pal mobile scanner now, so I can scan the pictures without harming the album.  So I thought I would scan the pictures and share with you what I know about the "old people".  So the next several posts will be about the people in this album.  They are my ancestors from my great grandmother Olive Iola Dixon's family.